Familiarity is comforting... Most people are uncomfortable trying new things. ... And in the end it is indeed our fault. The Hollywood moguls only give us what we want.

I think Sturgeon's second law ("90% of everything is crud") has always held. Most of the stuff people make is safe, derivative, and unimaginative. That's what most people are comfortable with most of the time. It's the other 10% (which might be a high estimate!) that stands out and gives those other 90% of the folks something new to copy - once everyone's got used to it and knows it's now "safe".

The situation always looks worse in the present, because the past has a way of filtering out the second-rate stuff so that when we look back we only see the innovators and creators who changed tastes or attitudes. There were certain periods of high creativity in the past (Renaissance Italy for example) but for the most part I imagine that no matter when you lived, you'd have found the 90%-crud rule was pretty much the norm. ...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.